RSSGifts from Real People 2
November 28, 2009
Ours in not a family that can give $250 watches as gifts, though the magazines tell us that we’re supposed to give them and expect to receive them.
For those of us, which includes most of us, who shop at our local malls and box stores, how about these?
Insanely Healthy Pumpkin Bread
November 5, 2009
Yellow vegetables take a little more work to figure into every day. My favorite thing is this bread.
Love it with soup. Love it with honey.
Love it with ED Smith More Fruit Cherry Blueberry Jam, which I can no longer buy because I have a little problem with it.
The True Winter Child
October 27, 2009
When people learn about the relationship between body colouring and character, many feel uncomfortable. They wonder if this line of thought qualifies as racist. Regardless of how much truth it may contain, the purpose is not to show that any type is superior or inferior to any other. Everybody is needed and welcome.
Read moreSpeak Your Limits
August 29, 2009
We know what we don’t want. We don’t want our husbands to do this. We don’t want our kids to do this. Knowing all that isn’t really moving us forward or covering new ground. What we need to be asking is what we DO want. Then we have to say it out loud. Not inside our own heads and hoping others will hear.
Read moreFitness Magazine July/August 2009: A Keeper
August 6, 2009
The best thing about this magazine is that it feels like it’s for the real world. It doesn’t harp on the weight loss, I-got-to-a-size-6, thing as much as the health and strength benefits. This is not an anatomy lesson or a journey beyond your outer limits. It is intended to be practical and motivating.
Read moreSome True Spring Children
July 23, 2009
Pure season kids are the real deal. They haven’t yet learned to temper some of their pure characteristics.
These are the party children. Playful, silly, unpredictable. Would shoot Grandma with the water cannon. As 2 year olds, it takes a lot of extended family to keep them alive.
The True Summer Child
July 2, 2009
You don’t expect a whirling dervish to come out of someone who looks like Mrs. Claus. Anne of Green Gables … less of a reach. Cruella DeVil … still less. We instinctively expect a personality and a coloring to be associated because it so often works that way.
Read moreThe Best Skin Softening Treatment
March 19, 2009
Paula’s Choice Hydrating Treatment Mask is what you hope moisturizing masks will turn out to be when you buy them but somehow they never quite deliver. It leaves your skin the way you hope wonderful moisturizers will but with a more lasting effect. This mask is a hybrid of the most effective cream you’ve ever used and a fantastic softening mask. There is not a trace of greasiness. The feeling is more of drawing water from the air.
My skin is generally oily. I haven’t much need for hydrating masks. But there is no product that comes close to the performance of this one when
- I’ve gotten too exuberant with the exfoliants and my skin is very sensitive and a bit inflamed. Even my regular non-irritating products will sting, but not this wonderful stuff. Wear this for a couple of night and I promise you, your skin will feel baby-ish – moist, plumped, relaxed. It allows a very healing environment. Each morning, I can tell that my skin has healed significantly just overnight.
- It’s a case of sunburned skin, which should never happen but if you believe that, you don’t have children. The product applies very soft and velvety. It doesn’t sting, spreads easily, is not greasy or slippy, and feels calming and cooling to skin.
- I do my usual Skin Balancing Carbon Mask which is quite lovely in a green-black swamp mud sort of way. I place this around my eyes as an eye mask. I gob it on but it’s thick enough to not migrate into your eyes even if the mask is on an hour because you forgot it and the green stuff is crunchy and itchy but your book is so good you didn’t rinse it off. The consistency is of a thick cream, like DQ soft ice cream. It holds a formed swirly shape.
- My children had very very dry skin as toddlers and one still does to this day. Chlorinated pools are particularly offensive. You know those patches of scaly, itchy skin they get on their back? Nothing, and I mean nothing, solved the problem as well as this product. I tried Eucerin. Dormer. Keri. Shea. Akerat. Hydrocortisone. Curel. Lubriderm. Body Shop Butters, though I was averse to using something scented. This is the stuff they ask for. All 3 have a tube by their bed. They haven’t outgrown the dry chapped hands in winter tendency but we have the solution for all these problems.
- I want the best hand and foot cream I know. Sleeping with socks is more than I can bear but with this mask, I don’t need to because it stays put. I add a few drops of lavender or rose oil for this purpose only, barricade the door to my room, and dare someone to get me out of bed. Wear this at night and the Pure Mineral Sunscreen SPF 15 in the day and your kids will very soon stop telling you that you have old lady hands. These are 2 of the most skin-soothing products I know, no matter how sensitive or irritated the skin might be.
- You have a friend whose skin reacts to everything she puts on it. This is the only thing that doesn’t require a few days of indecision about whether it will irritate. She can tell almost immediately that it will be fine. She uses it as her everyday moisturizer. I was glad to give her some to try. I gave her the whole tube 4 days later. Many of you with reactive or sensitive skin will do the same when you see how your skin looks and feels after replacing your moisturizer with this for 3 days. (Of course, it contains no sunscreen so either you use that as well in the daytime, or just use this for a few nights and leave your day routine as is.)
- Your husband is going out with skin so dry that it looks like it has a layer of chalk on it. God knows why that would be after scrubbing his face with Irish Spring. It has no scent and it won’t get in his eyes or make his face shine. He can feel the effect so quickly that he figures he’s getting some bang for his buck. Thankfully, neither the bottle nor cream are peachy pink, so with the words turned towards the wall, the tube can live on his bathroom shelf.
It doesn’t apply thick and white and masky. It goes on invisibly in a thin layer and translucent in a thicker layer, but it’s not white like sunscreen can be. There is absolutely no color residue. It feels much more soft and velvety than any other cream or mask I know, including Paula’s other creams. The texture really is quite unique, more like whipped cream rather than oil. You can put makeup over it within 5 minutes if you want to and there would be no trace of color. I never ever rinse it off, though you could, like any mask.
I believe this is one of the superstars of Paula’s lineup, I really do.
Do you know that cleansers and toners are 25% off in March AND shipping is $3 on all orders? So, that’s Canadian money at par and free shipping from a US site. The next step is obvious. Lay in your summer supplies and pick up a tube of this mask. You will not regret it.
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Paula’s Choice Hydrating Treatment Mask is what you hope moisturizing masks will turn out to be when you buy them but somehow they never quite deliver. It leaves your skin the way you hope wonderful moisturizers will but with a more lasting effect. This mask is a hybrid of the most effective cream you’ve ever used and a fantastic softening mask. There is not a trace of greasiness. The feeling is more of drawing water from the air.
Read moreChristmas With Family
December 15, 2008
Why is it always right before a holiday that my weight is right where I want it? Back in September when I looked down at my body and wondered whose it was and how my head got attached to it, I thought I’d never feel my strength again. I believe there’s a 2 week setback headed our way.
And why is it that I handle stress so much better when my weight is in a decline, when I’m a little hungry all the time? I bet there’s a physiologic explanation but it eludes me. Kind of off topic, but still true. I wonder about it because the difference is dramatic.
Road trip!
In a van reeking of rose, which Bill won’t detect because his sense of smell only has 2 settings : Skunk / No Skunk , we’re driving to PEI. In a little minivan. With skates, snowsuits, gifts, and a lot of skin care products. If we get home without disease or accident, I consider family trips a fierce success.
The family is delighted with road trips. They eat junk food and watch movies for 20 hours. I am terribly bored. I try to do inner calming exercises. I listen to Josh’s Christmas CD. I’d go in the back and watch the movies but there’s no space. I’ve heard Star Wars Episode 3 eight times and never seen it once. The sounds are grotesque. This time, I bought The Golden Compass.
Once, ten years ago, we tried to drive all night. Oh, right. We were at the Ramada Inn by 10PM. The mother, the most pathetic one in the car, had her own room. Didn’t care if it cost $400 a night. And nobody was allowed in. We haven’t repeated that adventure. We try to not even talk about it.
I’ve Googled all the malls on the way. We’re driving through the US, you see. I love the USA. I’m so happy to be there. Even Wendy’s seems more fun. We usually drive through Canada but that Ottawa to Fredericton stretch is a nightmare of winter driving.
One thing about Christmas bugs me
I thought about what gets on my nerves about Christmas so as to deal with it. I’m a listmaker because it keeps my problems separated and they look more manageable.
Here is my list:
1. It costs too much.
Solution : The gift buying got pared down to the bare minimum. Nobody’s feelings were hurt. Everyone was relieved. We would all like to pare down our list. We live in a world where $20 gifts seem almost cheap and we’re expected to give $80 gifts. Every magazine says so. I give the gifts I sincerely want to give for the pleasure of choosing them and knowing they will be enjoyed. I don’t give a single thing that I have to give.
What kids learn at Christmas
I heard complaints from my offspring that “all my friends get 15 gifts” – ya, well , tough. Get over it. You got 5, less than $200 total. Be glad your parents live together and don’t fight. This is not a grab-all-you-can bonanza.
Being born into wealth is one of the worst things that can befall a child, I think. They are sloshing around in notions of entitlement and have very little sensitivity to anything else.
I don’t deny that the bred-in-the-bone belief that money comes easily has value because that’s the world they’ll reconstruct for themselves as adults. Hopefully they have the creative intelligence to learn what excess means and come to feel the pride that results from work.
I think a lot about what kind of human being I want to be. After all, it is my choice. It is not stamped on my DNA. I lived with a woman when I was in University 20 years ago. She showed me what it means to think about the other guy. People who understand the effect their behavior might have on others, and care enough to alter their actions without turning it into a big sacrifice, have my respect.
I’m sensitive to it in parenting skills also. Children are reared to achieve, to be confident, to express their individuality, to excel, whatever. Nobody has ever introduced the concept that their actions and words might have an effect on other people, nevermind what that effect might be. They’re entirely inwardly focused. They’re driven to be disciplined, to get certain marks, to own certain things so they can be part of certain groups – big deal.
Most of them are a pain to be around. Many, MANY, are outright cruel. They do what makes them feel good in the moment with nary a glimmer that their deeds could have any impact on another living being. Parents allow these little superstars to treat them so condescendingly, it’s embarrassing to watch. These kids certainly don’t deny themselves if they feel their needs must be met, with no hunch about what the greater good could possibly mean. They may be future success stories but they’ve never learned to release their tight grasp on their needs to accommodate someone else or take care with their feelings. They’re clever, but who cares? If they’re at your house, you’re counting the minutes till they go home.
Two Stories
I always say that if I had to choose again, I’d never be a veterinarian. I would be a cosmetic dermatologist. But that’s not true. I really am, or I’ve become, a cat and dog doctor. My mother showed me how to communicate with them. I don’t share too many stories from that world but these two, so opposite, are pertinent.
Muffin is a 10 year old Schnauzer. She’ll bite you if she doesn’t know you, and might try even if she does. That’s ok. Vets spend their first year out of school being eaten alive. After that, they develop faster reflexes than a Jedi. Her owner is an elderly gentleman who has no family. He is not expected to live 3 days. He has cancer. Muffin, who came to this man when her previous owner died of cancer, has been living with the neighbor for a month. Gradually, she has stopped eating. The last thing to go was her desire to play with her ball. There is no money to determine if she has an illness or has simply decided that there’s no point in living. Everything she cared about has been taken away, again – but this time, she’s older and she can’t cope. This isn’t an uncommon situation. Yesterday, it just got to me.
At the far other end of the spectrum, my wonderful colleague and I were discussing Christmas wish lists. Her entire family is coming for Christmas and some gifts in the exchange will be between near strangers. She commented on how hard she was finding it to write her list because “there’s nothing I want”.
She speaks for most of us. “There is nothing I want”. When in the history of the world have humans been able to say that? Our needs are so completely met that we actually would prefer not to receive more “stuff”. Christmas just makes me weepy. I thought about it all day.
Christmastime places an expectation that everyone should find everlasting joy. Easily. At Target. Many won’t. Muffin will probably not be alive.
Find the meaning
For those of you so overwhelmingly blessed that you will be with your family, eating well, sharing gifts that you don’t need, knowing that you have more than everything you want, take 10 minutes in solitude each day to be deeply grateful.
I’ll be back two weeks. I wish for you to find peace in your own thoughts. There’s no price tag worthy of it. Enjoy your families, however you feel about them the rest of the year. Every other thing in life is for sale.
-->In a van reeking of rose, which Bill won’t detect because his sense of smell only has 2 settings : Skunk / No Skunk , we’re driving to PEI. In a little minivan. With skates, snowsuits, gifts, and a lot of skin care products. If we get home without disease or accident, I consider family trips a fierce success.
Read moreNose Rings And Tattoos
November 5, 2008
Go ahead. Read this and start typing your comment. Tell me that you totally disagree and that I’m hampered by old-fashioned tastes. I can take it.
A tattooed Mom
A long time ago, maybe a year or more, a great and wonderful friend, let’s say Joy, asked me to write about her many tattoos. This is a 40 year old woman in a good marriage, with children, living in a small town.
Here is what she said:
What makes a person want to be so different or stand out? I know I don’t want to be noticed, but yet here I am […with facial jewelry, various piercings, and tattoos]. I recently got my nose pierced and I love it. I feel different and it makes me feel beautiful.
I’ve thought of what to write many times but couldn’t find a place inside myself to write from. It would be like trying to write about why we should shave our heads. I can’t get anywhere close to that topic.
Photo byMarco Gomes
Piercings at the office
More recently, the question came up of nose rings and piercings in women over 40, particularly those of us who work in conformist, traditional, office environments.
Most importantly, I think you do what you gotta do. Since I don’t aspire to that look, I ask myself what motivates women to go there. You buy a lipstick because the color’s pretty. Permanent transformations might be intended to send a different message – or am I reading too much into it?
Leaving a hiding place
There are many levels here.
Joy is saying “I’m not who you think I am”. She is mounting a quiet revolution against an oppressive upbringing. She’s speaking to her parents, to her childhood, saying “I am my own woman. I don’t have to be who you wanted.” The words are too hard and too awkward, so the gesture takes its place.
The question now is “Who is the real woman? The child who lost her way, who couldn’t be a part of her parents’ world because it conflicted too deeply with her own spirit? Or the adult who is looking for her own voice but drowning in self-doubt?
Photo byangler70
And where is the answer to be found? The anxiety has been huge and taken a physical toll. The true woman inside is screaming to be let out, to find her shape and her voice, but isn’t sure she’ll be accepted. She’s also not sure what the final shape will be or what the first step in finding it would be. The present contours are only safe because she’s lived in them for 40 years. It takes big emotional energy to fight back against 40 years of training. On the other hand, is committing yourself to resigned unhappiness ever a better choice than conquering the complete unknown?
The appealing forbidden
Similar but not the same is the anti-establishment connotation. The voice sounds like “Despite the rules I have to live by, I cannot be fully controlled”. Depending on the woman, it sometimes looks a little desperate. It reminds folks of all those other piercings and smacks of a mid-life crisis.
Do teens do this stuff because everyone else is, because the overlying creed of the teenager is to be part of a group? Seeing yourself as a dissident, rebelling against the institutions your parents appear enslaved by, that’s all part of teenagerhood.
Cultures and crowds
Do women over 40 make these more invasive and permanent physical changes only because they feel it looks good? Some must. East Indian women are almost expected to have tattoos and piercings, but maybe we’re just used to seeing it. We expect different cultures to adorn themselves differently.
Photo byJim Patton
Is it regional? In a city with an artistic and university population, people look entirely different. Or is it just the same thing as Joy said, but on a bigger scale? In small conservative towns, people don’t want to stand out. In cities, people need to do more to be noticed in the crowd. It tramples convention less because everyone has more liberal taste and expectation in the personal decoration of others.
My tedious taste
What do I think about a nose ring? It looks strange, no matter how old you are. It never ever looks refined, elegant, or classy. In a 20 year old, it just conveys subversiveness, but not beauty. But, look, maybe you don’t aspire to tasteful. Tasteful might bore you sick and you may long for freedom of expression.
My style is tame and lackluster, you know? I don’t like purple eyeshadow either. I wear colorful clothes, the less well tailored, the better. I don’t care if I look like a walking color wheel, because that’s when I feel like the real me. You could put me in a fitted suit and heels and I’d feel like an impostor, like a soap opera character. It would shut me down and I would act as dull as I thought I looked.
I get a confusing message from tattoos and piercings, small or large, in women our age. Rather like “Is this woman doing this only because she thinks it’s gorgeous, or is there a social point she’s trying to make, or have I missed a personal statement of some sort?”
It becomes a distraction that people don’t know how to react to. In Joy’s case, that’s exactly what she’s after…to make people a little uncertain around her. She wants them to ask themselves if they know her as well as they think they do, her parents most of all.
Revealing The Real Me
I guess we’re all trying to broadcast “the real me”. Would you agree? Often, the message is simply “You think you know me but you don’t. There are parts of me that are concealed. I can do things you don’t expect. I am stronger than you think. I’m not afraid to make permanent changes in who I am. And I’m starting with this piercing.”
Photo byziobill
At the end of the day, unless anyone else is being harmed, you do what makes you feel good. You are always stronger than you, or anyone else, knows. If you’ll walk away from a nose piercing with renewed strength and wondering why you waited so long, then do it. Forget about everyone else. As Joy’s husband says so eloquently, “F— ‘em all, let God sort them out.”
-->My friend once said to me,
“What makes a person want to be so different or stand out? I know I don’t want to be noticed, but yet here I am […with facial jewelry, various piercings, and tattoos]. I recently got my nose pierced and I love it. I feel different and it makes me feel beautiful.”
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